Queen of Diamonds
by cateliot
Summary: He knew her legend before he ever knew her name. One-shot. (MayWard with Philinda hints, covers seasons one and two). Complete.


_**Author's Note:**_ Original Marvel Characters and locations belong to Marvel Entertainments and Affiliates. Everything else is mine. I'm a big Philinda shipper, but I really wanted to try out MayWard for once. (But of course, there are always Philinda hints.) I read some really well written and believable pieces recently that made me want to experiment a little for myself. I think it turned out a really nice long representation of their interactions. I love to write May from other people's point of view. Reviews and feedback are appreciated. Let me know what you think.

 _ **Summary**_ : He knew her legend before he ever knew her name. One-shot. Complete.

* * *

 ** _"She's been through more hell than you'll ever know. But that's what gives her beauty an edge…You can't touch a woman who can wear pain like the grandest of diamonds around her neck."_**

* * *

When he saw her on the Bus for the first time, she looked exactly the same as she had in the advanced specialist combat training video he had first seen her in. He had been a second year cadet in the Academy; wide eyed, pudgy cheeked, and far too eager to please.

The movie was bad quality and grainy, but clearly featured the young woman. Chinese. Tiny, but lithe, strong. She moved with the grace of a dancer, the flexibility of a dancer, and the ferocity of samurai.

He knew who she was, of course.

( _He had heard her legend before he had ever learned her name._ )

They all had.

"Specialist work isn't like field work," Agent Blake began, nodding towards the video, "it's the elite of the elite. You're put into unimaginable situations and asked to do things that you couldn't ever dream of doing. Without question. In combat zones. Under fire. And most of the time you don't make it back. You must become _more_ than men."

The woman spun in the air, her figure levitating in the air, as if against gravity as her kick landed on the final two remaining assailants. She landed on her feet and moved away from the pile of bodies with a glow in her eyes that he never forgot.

Ward forced his eyes to move back to Coulson instead of following May's figure back towards the cockpit.

"Melinda May is just the pilot? Come on, sir, what game are you really playing?"

::

When he got a good look at the rest of the team he was assigned too, two kid scientists, a mouthy hacker, and field agent that hadn't seen action in months, he was glad for someone that could watch his back.

::

May was quiet during their board games. Coulson insisted they had "team bonding" once a week and usually let Skye or Simmons pick out the activity. This week's game had been Go Fish and a half drunken game of two truths and a lie.

Both Skye and Fitz were tipsy, laying all over a blushing Simmons. Coulson was grinning wider than normal and Grant was feeling a pleasant buzzing around his head.

His eyes found the Specialist across from him. She was sitting on the couch next to Coulson; it was the closest Ward had seen her let anyone get. May always seemed to have an aura around her that nobody breeched; a level of personal space that didn't allow for the common place intimacy—the brushing of shoulders as people pass, the

Her eyes were attentive on the speaker of the game, her hand steady on the bottle that was barely half empty. Coulson's arm was flung around the back of the couch, not touching her shoulders, but close enough for Ward to find it interesting that May had allowed the contact.

It wasn't until Simmons was halfway through her turn that he realized what she was doing. She was reading them, each of them, intently, getting a baseline for their lying skills. The only indication was her fingers calmly circling the rim of the beer as they were talking.

She was silently interrogating them.

His eyes met hers and his coughed slightly, dropping her gaze sharply.

"Okay, the T-1000 is up," Skye's voice shocked him out of his investigation and he cleared his throat. His mind scrambled to assemble his thoughts before he spoke.

"So I had a dog named Buddy, a retriever, uh I nineteen when S.H.I.E.L.D. approached me for the Academy, and I've spent some time in Russia working at the embassy."

There was a squabble of conversation from Skye and Simmons which he tried to tune out. His eye line moved back to May. Coulson said something in her ear which she smirked at without taking her eyes off his face. Her gaze was even and mesmerizing; the large brown orbs intelligent and guarded.

Something about them sent shivers down his spine.

"The second one."

When she spoke, there was no doubt in her words. She was positive of her choice and he blinked once, surprised by just how easily she could pick things out, even when he was trying lay false traps of tells and lies, but he nodded with an easy, "yep" slipping out of his mouth.

During her turn, the kids on the floor straightened up a little, listening raptly to the normally silent woman. Each sentence was general, revealing nothing other than surface level details. _She was good._

If she had a tell, he couldn't pick it out. She was calm and her voice didn't waver. She inclined her head slightly when Coulson guessed the third.

( _Ward wondered if any of it was true._ )

::

They had been too slow to stop the helicopter from taking off. He swore angrily as he watched the target slammed the door to the bird shut in the air.

He didn't see her until it was too late and chastised himself for it later. May had been on the other building than he and Skye. She moved faster than both however, launching herself over the edge of the building, and into the air.

She was like a smooth black shadow and twisted with precision in the air.

Skye screamed and he felt his heart leap in suspense, but May's face was smooth as her hand caught the underneath of the helicopter which tipped slightly in the air and she hoisted herself up into the chopper.

Ward watched from the edge of the building, the same place his teammate had leapt from moments ago, as the chopper hovered in midair. There was clearly a struggle going on in the tiny space as the machine dipped and swayed in the air above the sky scrapers.

Behind him he could hear Simmons admonishing Coulson about May's lack of self-preservation and riskiness during missions. He turned back to find Skye's eyes fixed on the landing helicopter, a vague awed grin on her lips. Fitz's mouth was still partly hung open.

Coulson's eyes briefly met his and he knew with a shudder in his gut, that _yes_ , that move was just as risky as he had thought it was. And _no_ , he couldn't have stopped her if he had tried.

Simmons' called it a lack of self-preservation.

But Ward knew it was a calculated tactical decision; Vanchat could be allowed to escape with the stolen alien technology and he would have succeed in the chopper, so May had taken out the variable.

Skye said it was freakin' badass and immediately wanted to know when her SO could teach her how to jump onto planes and helicopters like May. He just shot her a look that plainly said _you wish, kid_. She cheekily stuck her tongue out in retaliation. He could only think of comparing her naivety with May's grace.

Coulson just shot his second in command a loaded look when she hopped out of the pilot's chair with the briefcase in hand, the helicopter full of a pile of unconscious—or crossed off, he couldn't tell—bodies.

When Ward asked her about it later that night, after the rest of the team had retired to their bunks for the night, May smirked slightly before draining the rest of her drink.

( _She called it flight._ )

::

( _"Let me help you.")_

He hadn't planned on following her. In the moment, he knew he was compromised; the inside of his mind was raw with emotions he had put away long ago and had no stomach for reliving. His body was exhausted from the staff's strength and he felt the nausea and headache coming back from the earlier aliments on the bus.

He knew he shouldn't go in there.

He could have compromised the mission. She was a master manipulator; one of the best spies in the world. She would know if she was being played.

In the last moments before closing the door, he didn't care.

There was a glass sitting on the edge of the dresser as he walked in. May was seated in the chair near the window. Shadows danced across her face, making it seem even more pale and her eyes even brighter.

She was calm. Her eyes critical, but kind.

"You know how to control it…when you're angry."

Her eyes never left his face but she inclined her head slightly. He felt the liquid burn down the back of his throat. "I just…it never goes away, does it?"

"It'll fade." Her voice was confident. "Eventually it'll fade to the background like it had before until it's triggered and you're back here all over again."

His eyes jumped to her face. "I don't want to live with it. I want to forget about it."

"It hurts."

( _Didn't it always?_ )

He shrugged slightly feeling slightly flustered. He threw himself into one of the chairs near the table and looked back over at her. "I'm sure I'm hardly unique in that." May didn't answer, but her eyes held his gaze.

Ward took another sip of wine.

"How are you just sitting there?" His voice rose in volume and he could feel exhaustion weighing on limbs. "I'm hulking out over here and you're—just—just…"

"There's not a secret," she said, straightening slightly in the chair and he found himself grasping for her words, "you learn to live with it, like an amputation, the loss just becomes a part of you."

Her broken pieces made her shimmer like a mosaic in the night light. The silence between them was breathy and he was almost lost in her gaze before crashing back down into reality. His throat was coarse when he spoke.

"I had two brothers…one older and one younger and I never tell anyone about them…"

As he spoke, he felt the rage build up into a terrifying crescendo in his chest, he looked up to Melinda's calm eyes and in those moments, he knew she would always be scarier than he ever could.

( _And he fell a little in love with her._ )

::

Their affair was simple.

The rules for it were simpler: no strings attached.

Their hotel rooms were quiet, nondescript. He valued the time away from the team and the quiet of beige walls and generic drapes. It was peaceful.

The only thing complicated was May herself.

::

He awoke with a start. The room was dark but the sudden draft of cold air confirmed that he had awakened for a reason. The hotel room was standard, but the bed was surprisingly soft. Grant shrugged on his flannel pants before moving towards the slightly cracked doors. He found her sitting on the balcony railing. The window blowing her hair back sharply and the only light came from the moon and the lamp from the room.

"May?"

"We used to have a game in the Academy. There were only thirteen recruits my year and we would all go up to the roof and stand on the railing, facing out so we could see the rest of the world."

The emptiness in her voice sent shivers down his spine.

"My Supervising Officer was a post tactical assault officer. He told us that there was a trick to living in this world. It was knowing whether or not you could complete your mission. And the only way to truly know that was to look down from a hundred foot drop and decide if we would jump…if it was up to us."

Grant's heard sped up as she balanced precariously on the railing. Her balance was light, precise, graceful even if she didn't look insane.

"We would go and away from the eyes watching our every move. It was a game, see who could balance the longest, whose courage wasn't affected by the forty story drop. Or perhaps it was a game of who was the drunkest. Until five recruits all jumped together after their first kill job, then the Academy closed off the roof permanently. I guessed they answered their own question."

She hadn't turned to face him. He wasn't even sure if May even knew he was there. It was the first time she had spoken of anything of a personal nature. She was the queen of revealing only what she wanted him to know. He could trace her bare skin, but know nothing more than what was on the surface, never being able to read her like he could the others.

She only let him in at arm's length. Ward took a tentative step forward towards her, feeling the breeze touch his skin, chilling him.

"Melinda?"

The sound of her first name caught her attention and her head turned slightly back towards him. He knew how rarely it was used. Hell, Coulson only used on rare occasion and those two had known each other for years. The moon caught an angle off her cheekbones and her hair and the shadows on her face blended into the backdrop as if she was a part of the night herself.

"So how do you survive?"

He made it another two steps...he was within arm's reach of the balcony now. Ward wasn't sure she'd actually jump. If she did, she had done a hiding from them all. Of all the people on the Bus who had been touched by darkness, the last one he expected to give in would be May.

"One by one, you drown all the people you become."

She brushed past him, moving swiftly but gracefully back into the darkness of the hotel room.

In that moment, he realized that her pain would always out fathom his own.

( _Later when he would reflect on this conversation in his cell underneath the Playground, he remembered the look in her eyes and the almost unnoticeable shake of her hands and he knew she was the most sane of all of them._ )

::

Her skin was milky porcelain, smooth and flawless. He didn't understand how someone who had seen so much combat could be without any scars. She was the smallest person he ever bedded and the best.

Barely touching her at all because moving too much all at once, knocking into her as he rolled over or even jostling too loudly would wake the warrior next to him. He knew the symptoms of a sleeping specialist all too well.

It was a surreal feeling, watching her sleep. She smelled like jasmine and cool rain, exotic.

He found he liked the feeling of the early morning's best. When the rest of the world was still asleep and she had the barest hint of an accent on her English before she was fully awake. He found her routines fascinating. It was in the little things, the way she did the buttons on her shirt or the way she brewed tea.

( _How many scars would he be able to trace on the inside?_ )

He liked the mornings best because at night, he felt like someone else ( _three guesses who?_ ) should be in his place.

::

Lorelei made him take stock.

( _"Is this her? The beautiful warrior with the heart of ice?"_ )

Skye was explosively innocent; not in the unexperienced way, the world had given her a hell of a ride, but compared to May, her ledger was ivory. She hadn't been exposed to the horrors of war that specialists saw daily in the field. She hadn't been given the burden of making the impossible decision, the choice of whether dozens of people live or die and it showed in her smile. So, she was loud and inappropriate and kind, despite having no family to show her otherwise. But also light and funny.

She made him laugh.

Melinda on the other hand was forbidden.

She was like a shattered mirror; sharp and fractured, beautiful and deceiving, reflecting parts of images while never showing the entire piece as one. She knew what it was like to be able to kill so easily that it was harder to not to. She was a fellow survivor, of what he still wasn't sure, but she held onto to her pain to keep breathing.

And that made him want her all the more.

He found in her in the cockpit after the debrief by Coulson. She didn't turn as he closed the door softly behind him and sat down in the co-pilot's chair. It was a while before he spoke.

"I didn't mean to hurt you."

"You didn't. I told you there was never the risk of that, not with me."

His throat closed slightly and he didn't push the conversation he knew she wouldn't have. After all, Melinda May never did anything she didn't want to. The words he wanted to say were heavy on his tongue.

( _"Didn't or didn't have to? You seem to be doing a good job of all on your own."_ )

He left her in her solitude.

::

"If Coulson doesn't want me here, he doesn't need me."

Ward's hand relaxed a fraction on the cold metal behind his back as May brushed past his. The air between them filled with the scent of jasmine. She was obviously distracted; it was clear in her less graceful than normal movements.

He couldn't get rid of the knot in his stomach since he stepped on the Bus.

( _It would be like killing a rare jungle cat, an elusive and rare predator._ )

And when she walked out the ramp into the Canadian snow, he wanted to collapse with relief. He didn't want to have her blood on his hands, not today.

::

He waited weeks for her to show up. He expected her almost immediately; in the wake of his capture, to torture the answers they all wanted from him. But she didn't come.

First it was Coulson.

And then Tripplett, which was just sad because he didn't even belong in Coulson's little rag tag team of misfits.

And then they sent Skye.

Even Simmons came after he failed to slice his wrists.

But May never came.

Months stretched and he finally gave up on ever seeing her in the dark of the basement, until one moment he had shut his eyes and the next she was sudden _there_. He jerked to a sitting position and his eyes marked her face.

Her little quip about his torture being external hadn't been lost on him and the waiting for her arrival was almost more tortuous than the others fruitless attempts at getting information. She was leaning against the back wall as she looked at him.

She was too far away, protected by the shadows, and he couldn't see her eyes.

( _"The Queen of Diamonds", that was what Garrett had called her during their debrief, and looking at her now, Grant could think of no more fitting title._ )

"You were in my way."

She tilted her head slightly to the right and walked into the light, coming to a stop a few feet from the shimmering glass of his cage. She looked smaller, he mused, he wasn't sure if it was the stress Coulson was putting on her in creating the new S.H.I.E.L.D. or the stress she was putting on herself for not recognizing him as a spy before it was too late.

"I need you to tell me why."

There wasn't a ripple in her composure. She was every bit as put together as she would be if they were talking about the weather over tea.

"You know why."

If anyone could understand why he did what he did it was her. May shook her head and Ward frowned harshly at the movement.

"You have no idea what you've given up, do you?"

::

The first days he was on the run, all he could see was _her_. May was everywhere. In the shadows of the alleys. In the dark headed women that walked along the street with him. In the dark tinted windows of cars driving by.

He knew there were hundreds of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and other agencies looking for him. ( _But he was one of the best._ ) He could easily evade them and their cookie cutter combat skills. He had his orders from Garrett.

There was only one agent he needed to be worried about. ( _Because she was better_.)

So Ward stayed alert for the one woman who could, without a doubt, defeat him.


End file.
